My Experiment With Smart Drugs
It was in March, in the drizzle, that I realized my brain was burned out. Like a rusty engine, I could hear it chug-chug and splutter - but it would never quite start running at top speed. I had just come back from a rough month-long work-trip to Bangladesh, and I had an Everest of work in front of me. It was all fascinating, and all urgent - but I was plodding though it at half my normal speed. I needed to be performing at my best; instead I was at my worst. I stared at the London rain from my window, and slogged on.
That's when I stumbled across a small story in an American scientific magazine. It said there was a spiky debate across America's universities about the increasing use by students of a drug called Provigil. It was, they said, Viagra for the brain. It was originally designed for narcoleptics in the seventies, but clinical trials had stumbled across something odd: if you give it to non-narcoleptics, they just become smarter. Their memory and concentration improves considerably, and so does their IQ.
It's not an amphetamine or stimulant, the article explained: it doesn't make you high, or wired. It seems to work by restricting the parts of your brain that make you sluggish or sleepy. No significant negative effects have been discovered. Now students are using it in the run-up to exams as a "smart drug" - a steroid for the mind.
It sounded perfect. A few clicks on-line and I found I could order it from a foreign pharmacy, just £30 for a month's supply. I called a friend who is a GP, and told her what I was thinking of. She'd heard of people using the drug, and went away and looked up the details. "I think it's a stupid thing to do, because you shouldn't ever take drugs you don't need," she said when she called back. "Do I think it'll seriously harm you? No, I don't. But you'd be much better off taking a long holiday than narcolepsy pills." Then she warned me: "There is one known side-effect." Oh, damn I thought. A downside. "It often causes people to lose weight." Are you mad? You become cleverer and thinner? I whipped out my Visa card immediately.
A week later, the little white pills arrived in the post. I sat down and took one 200mg tablet with a glass of water. It didn't seem odd: for years, I took an anti-depressant. Then I pottered about the flat for an hour, listening to music and tidying up, before sitting down on the settee. I picked up a book about quantum physics and super-string theory I have been meaning to read for ages, for a column I'm thinking of writing. It had been hanging over me, daring me to read it. Five hours later, I realised I had hit the last page. I looked up. It was getting dark outside. I was hungry. I hadn't noticed anything, except the words I was reading, and they came in cool, clear passages; I didn't stop or stumble once.
Perplexed, I got up, made a sandwich - and I was overcome with the urge to write an article that had been kicking around my subconscious for months. It rushed out of me in a few hours, and it was better than usual. My mood wasn't any different; I wasn't high. My heart wasn't beating any faster. I was just able to glide into a state of concentration - deep, cool, effortless concentration. It was like I had opened a window in my brain and all the stuffy air had seeped out, to be replaced by a calm breeze.
Once that article was finished, I wanted to do more. I wrote another article, all of it springing out of my mind effortlessly. Then I go to dinner with a few friends, and I decide not to tell them, to see if they notice anything. At the end of the dinner, my mate Jess turns to me and says, "You seem very thoughtful tonight."
That night, I lay in bed, and I couldn't sleep. I wasn't restless or tetchy; I just kept thinking very clearly, and I wanted to write it all down. I remembered there's a long history of people in high-pressure jobs using stimulants when their brains lost their sponginess: Anthony Eden was taking Benzedrine all through the Suez Crisis, and Jean-Paul Sartre wrote several of his novels while pumped on mescaline. Admittedly, these precedents aren't encouraging: Eden had a break-down, and Sartre's brain was so cooked that for the rest of his life, he had the recurring fear that he was being followed by a giant lobster. Am I making a stupid mistake? Am I mad?
The next morning I woke up and felt immediately alert. Normally it takes a coffee and an hour to kick-start my brain; today I'm ready to go from the second I rise. And so it continues like this, for five days: I inhale books and exhale articles effortlessly. My friends all say I seem more contemplative, less rushed - which is odd, because I'm doing more than normal. One sixty-something journalist friend says she remembers taking Benzadrine in the sixties to get through marathon articles, but she'd collapse after four or five says and need a long, long sleep. I don't feel like that. I keep waiting for an exhausted crash, and it doesn't seem to come.
When the American journalist David Plotz took Provigil, he said it should be given a slogan. Just as valium was marketed as "the housewife's little helper," he said this should be sold as "the boss' little helper." It makes you work better and harder than before.
It's hard to explain Provigil's effects beyond that. Normally, one day out of seven I have a day when I'm working at my best - I've slept really well, and everything comes easily and fast. Provigil makes every day into that kind of day. It's like I have been upgraded to a new operating system: Johann 3.0. On discussion boards, I talk to American student doctors taking the drug, who say they feel exactly the same way. "I keep thinking - where's the catch?" one says. It turns out it is being given to US soldiers too.
It was then that I noticed: I just wasn't very hungry. I am normally porcine; my ex once seriously considered having a trough made for me. But on Provigil, I was filled up by a bowl of soup and a piece of bread. I would feel stuffed half-way through my normal meals, and push the food away unfinished. One of my friends howled: "Who are you, and what have you done with the real Johann?"
Is all this just the placebo effect: I expect it to do this to me, so it does? Perhaps. But in the clinical trials, it worked much better than the placebo. But then I began to worry again. We don't know the long-term effects of this drug: nobody has been taking it for long. What if it causes your brain to deplete its resources and wear out? My wonderful grandmother has dementia, her life and personality dissolving in lost memories; no short-term concentration is worth that. A friend says to me one afternoon, "Why do you always feel like you're not good enough, and you need some kind of chemical enhancement?" It makes me wonder. There are also concerns that if you take it for too long, it can become addictive. So after five days on, I decided to take three days off, to see what would happen.
It was easy. I painlessly sagged back to my former somewhat-depleted state, as though the Provigil had never happened. I worked in my usual stop-start bursts. I ate my usual portions-and-a-half. I stared sadly at the pack of Provigil, and every time I hit a mental stumbling block, I had to discipline myself not to crack out a Provigil.
As soon as my three days were up and I started again, my brain revved back into super-speed and my stomach began to shrivel. But this time I began to worry about the ethics of it all. If this drug had been available during my A-Levels or finals, I would have been the first to guzzle it down. But isn't that cheating? What's the difference between Provigil for students and steroids for athletes? And if this drug becomes as popular as, say, anti-depressants or Ritalin, won't there be a social pressure for workers to take it? Many parents feel intensely pressured by schools today to drug away their child's disobedience; will they feel pressured by their bosses to drug away their natural fatigue?
Professor Anjan Chatterjee says, "This age of cosmetic neurology is coming, and we need to know it's coming." The use of Provigil and its progeny will be mainstream and mainlined in just a few years, he argues, and this made me feel excited by the prospect - and anxious. But all this raced through my brain as I worked faster (and ate less) than I ever have: it was hard to dwell on the drawbacks in those circumstances. As the end of my final five days approached, I had to decide what to do. Do I order another pack? Do I try to think all my thoughts at a faster pace from here on in with the power of Provigil?
I paced and agonised and finally concluded that taking narcolepsy drugs when you don't have narcolepsy is just stupid. Our lack of knowledge about what it does to your brain was, in the end, a deal-breaker for me. Perhaps in sixty years we'll know for sure it's safe, and I will have spent my life at only sixty percent brain-capacity - but I'd rather risk that than brain damage. So I have cut a deal with myself. I am keeping a pack in the bathroom cabinet for the days when I am really knackered and have to be able to work fast and fluently - but I won't ever take more than two or three a month.
As I put the tablets aside, I look out over my flat. My desk is piled high with the vast quantities of work I have pumped out. My cupboards are full of uneaten food. The whole place is freakishly clean, something I did in my spare time, without even thinking about it. Ah, Provigil, you are a gorgeous temptress. With a sad sigh, I close the bathroom cabinet on her sweet temptation, and stumble back to my slow, patchy life, with my slow, patchy brain.
Johann Hari is a columnist for the Independent. To read his latest article for Slate, click here.
If you are having a baby, there is an even more proven smart drug you can give them - breast milk. To read Johann's article about that, click here.
There's an interesting critical response to this article here.
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It is not safe to buy drugs on line for you don't know what is in them. It is not safe. Everyone needs to see their doctor before taking medication, as well as find out about the medication beforehand. Heeding doctors advice (as was given) and understanding putting yourself at risk without knowing the potential side effects is not a wise decision.
I've had some of the dumbest doctors on the planet. Thank you very much, but I will research for myself. Where do you think the doctor in the article got her info from? She looked it up online.
Due to legitimate health reasons, I've taken Provigil since it's become available here in the US. I know well the risks involved and I've chosen to take them. In return, unlike any other medication I've tried, Provigil has allowed me to live a more normal life.
It concerns me that folks are using Provigil recreationally when scientists still have only a purely theoretical understanding of its mechanism. This drug has been used by a statistically insignificant population for a relatively short period of time too. We have no idea what the long term effects are if any for prescribed usage.
I also happen to have severe ADHD. In addition to Provigil, I've taken Ritalin, Concerta et a over the yearsl. Compared to Adderall, Provigil just makes me a jitter-free wide awake scatterbrain. In truth, the jury is out as to whether or not Provigil helps concentration in any way other than allowing you to avoid feeling physically fatigued. A simple Google search will turn up almost as many studies concluding Provigil is not helpful in treating ADHD as there are where it is.
-AF
Yeah, I'm in a similar boat -- I have a measured IQ of 173, but I'm also diagnosed with "one of the worst cases of ADHD [the researcher] had ever seen". Couple that with a sleep disorder that makes me tired ALL the time, and Provigil is starting to look more and more attractive
173.......
By the way, I meant to type "incidence" in a prior posting...
Equivalent
what most people are missing in this discussion, is the fact that your brain is already scrambled by the environmental "drugs" you are exposed to.
these hormone mimics from plastics, hydrogenated food additives, synthetics chemicals, and even the fluoridated water. ( the Germans were going to use it to poison the water supplies in WWII).
you think you have time to wait and see if a drug is going to affect you, look how hard it is to get anyone to listen to hard science anyway.
http://www
People never used to get cancer,now you have a 1 in 5 chance of being killed by one. And the docs aren't even giving people in chemo this herb to help the chemo work.
http://www
http://blo
the odds are pretty good that this drug actually just dampens down the "grey noise" of overstimulated synapses in your addled brain, and allows you to concentrate.
want the same thing in your body? up the NO in your bloodstream with AAKG. It will help your body clear itself of wild cells, by kicking awake the white blood cells that have been turned off by bacteria.
Gives you energy too.
Add whatever you want to your system, your Govt has allowed business to do it for 25 years.
It begins and ends with the Pharma's greed machine. They really don't care one iota about healing anyone...j
Wonder drugs are the game. I wonder how long it will take before we the sheeple catch on.
Right now, today, my wife is going through an excruciating event that just began last Friday.She had a sinus problem. The doctor prescribed a new drug called Levaquin. Three days after starting this poi.s .on...she is becoming an invalid! I failed her since ninety nine and forty four one hundreths percent of the time I check things out. By the time I googled (Sunday) about this dangerous drug it has already has done it's damage!!! She's at the doctor's office (3.22 p.m., ET), as I type this comment, asking him why he prescribed it for her. I pray she overcomes the insane side-effects. This medical/ph
Just theirs.
Ohioan4truth - good luck to you and your wife on the fluoroquinolone toxicity. I've been reading a lot about it lately. Hopefully some weeks of inactivity will help (assuming she has not already popped an achilles tendon or some such).
This website has a fair bit of info, if you haven't already stumbled across it.
www.fqrese
Levaquin is not a new drug. It is important to read and learn beforehand because while your wife is suffering from something bad, others are taking it with much success. There is much information out there concerning this. Every body is different and therefore different reactions (or none at all) will occur. As long as we continue to fault the pharmaceutical industry for all that is wrong with our healthcare system, we may just find that we will have nothing when we really need them. I don't believe that scientists and doctors break their code of ethics and they are the ones developing these drugs with the money from Pharma. I am suffering from pneumonia right now and ever since taking a different antibiotic I have improved drastically. Prior to taking it, I was sick for nearly a month. Without this treatment, I could have died.
Levaquin is, IIRC, a quinolone antibiotic. It can have rare, but serious side effects; it sounds like your wife was one of the unlucky recipients of those side effects. You have my condoloences and best wishes for her speedy recovery (many/most people recover fully once the drug is stopped).
That being said, you have to understand that medicine is not 100%. My girlfriend is allergic to shellfish; does that mean shellfish is poison (as you put it)? No... it just means bodies -- and how they react to various substances -- are different. Quinolones are no different; some people (sadly, sounds like your wife) are allergic, and some people are helped tremendously. Since more people are helped than harmed, the doc was within using good judgment to prescribe it if the allergy was unknown.
People never give credit to medicine or science when it works, but they're eager to blame or sue when it fails. We always feel like the failures are PERSONAL, when the fact of the matter is that that 1% chance has to happen to *someone*.
People "never used to get cancer?" Where the hell did you pull this howler from?
Cancer has been with us since before history. One fact that is little reported is that cancer is mostly a disease of middle-aged and older folks (not always, but mostly, due to the way cancer works), and since until relatively recently in modern history people had a life expectancy of 35 or so... well, you connect the dots. We seem to get cancer more because *we're living longer*.
On the contrary, cancer has become more detectable and more survivable than ever before.
As to the rest of your post, I don't know anything about "AAKG" so I can't comment.
It brings out the intelligence within one that was dormant in the past.
I would go as far as throwing away the bottle you have kept in your medicine cabinet. Even though most addictions are physical, there is a very real psychological component to addictive behavior that should never be underestimated. The "need" perception is an extraordinary one to overcome and once a behavior moves from the category of "want" to "need", there simply is no going back.
If I were you, I would see a therapist to get my life in a more balanced order. Over-achieving is a dead-end prospect as far as life happiness and fulfillment is concerned and there is no shortage of examples on this well-beaten path.
WTF, are you really diagnosing him on Huffington ?
I have a sleep disorder which means that I do not get into stage four or cycle in my sleep properly. When Provigil came out on the market I asked my sleep doc for a script, but the drug had been approved for treatment of narcolepsy. He gave me a script and I used it when I was really drug out and had to drive or was going to be faced with a day where it was going to stress my energy.
It does work, I take the smallest dose, usually 100 mg., and do not usually take 200 unless I must, as in traveling across time zones. They are giving it to military pilots, to keep them alert and focused, and it is not addictive and doesn't make them paranoid, as the amphetamines they formerly were given did.
However, the appetite thing is from having more energy. One should have a sleep lab and evaluation to see if other things can be done to assist with one's sleep, and then only take the drug under the supervision of a doctor.
This link will help in understanding what really is going on with this drug thingy....
http://www
Brave New World...in
Cool link--thanks! How funny to see young Mike Wallace smoking during the interview.
You're welcome! I only wish more people could watch this interview to see how eerily close Huxley was to predicting how he thought the future could play out and what is truly behind the curtain of these so-called wizards that call all the shots. He nailed it as far as how Bush became president. He nailed it again when he described how advertising was a tool for the powerful to comtrol the masses. He just got it right...an
The really weird part...I saw it on T.V when it first aired. D.amn, I'm old! Ewwww!!! But wiser for it. No one, not even GWB, can fool me the first, let alone get one by me the second time!
It should be noted that, since you ordered the Modafinil(Provigil) from an online Pharmacy illegally, you really have no idea whatsoever what it is you took, and that makes this whole experiment less than conclusive.
I've had high cholesterol since my 20s, and finally went on Lipitor when I was 49. I only regret not having done it years ago. It seems like every time I turn around, it's helping prevent some other disease beyond heart disease and stroke like Alzheimer's. It's becoming the aspirin of the new millennium.
My doctor once gave me a sample pack of Provigil because I have long term insomnia which makes my concentration awful. While my reaction to it wasn't as strong as Johan's, it definitely helped. However, it turned out my health insurance doesn't cover it, and it would have cost something like $120 a month so I never filled the prescription. Still, if it was a more affordable drug, I would research it a bit more and would likely take it.
I was prepared to scoff at this report but I am far more curious and likely to seek it for my own use now. Thanks. As for worrying about what it might do in decades, well in decades, if I make it that long, I'll worry about that then.
Oh, dude.
"Better living through chemistry!"
Big Pharma equals Big No-No.
I mean, what did smart, thin and generally fit people do before big pharma?
Every medical fad is so ridiculous now. Enhance this, enhance that with drugs you have no idea what they are doing inside your mind and body. Not to mention, spirit.
While some require chemical rebalancing, most require nothing more than sleep, excercise and good diet.
Where does it end? When the entire population suffers the long-term side effects of these "miracle" drugs? It's madness and the author has seen the light. Glad you did, mate.
I think you're missing something here. The world as we know it has changed in the last 50 years. Perform or get out. Family is meaningless. Work is the primary motivation in our society. Drugs like this are inevitable. Worse yet, the top performers will start taking these drugs and raise the bar. The managers will see bursts in performance and giggle all the way to the bonus bank.
The "spirit" is supernatural, like ghosts and Santa Claus. You don't have to worry about a drug affecting that.
Is consciousness supernatural? How about energy? Most of us use `energy' as an amorphous term, but Einstein's thought experiments led to the realization that energy is, indeed, quantifiable.
Flat-out denial of that which animates us is an assertion of belief, not proof. More to the point, it reflects a mechanistic, narrowly deterministic world-view; a world-view which has been conclusively refuted by modern science.
http://en.
Reductionism has its uses, but it shouldn't be mistaken for a complete description of the universe or of human existence. In this regard, I'll take Albert Einstein & Rupert Sheldrake over Richard Dawkins.
For centuries, Alcohol has been the preferred stimulus for thousands of writers, frequently the substance gives the hopeful author the false impression that they are doing very creative, productive work and sometimes it is true, as with F. Scot Fitzgerald and Hemingway, but more often than not it impairs the creative process and leaves the aspiring author with a very harmful addiction.
Stimulants always have detrimental side effects that completely outweigh the illusionary benefits.
Bull
Agree
I hope you'll concede that people have the right to make their own choices with respect to drug use. Or is it still 1968, and we just need to open the doors of perception and the world will be perfect?
Sorry, I prefer to think about the economy.
Your description of its effects sounds similar to what I experienced on a Jarrow product called "ChocoMind". It is a combination of the active ingredient in cocoa plus a kick of caffeine. The first time I took it I was puttering around my house and the next thing I knew I had completely reorganized my closet, a project that had been naggingly starring me in the face for years. Phew! What was so hard about doing that? Got any closets you need perfecting
The effect since has not been as dramatic, but it does given me a non-buzz kind of energy. I excuse it by saying it's a food product, but I know it doesn't grow on trees (un-hybridized) in this form, so I'm not totally deluding myself. Nor do I take it everyday. Only when I think it will be of some help. Which isn't often.
I will never take pharmaceuticals for the brain. I don't care how freaked-out depressed I ever get. We don't know enough about what they actually do, because we don't know how the brain works completely.
Future generations will regard all our pill-taking like we regard the past practice of applying leaches.
You state that you have a history of overweight, only function normally "one day out of seven" when "you've slept really well" (which implies that sleep is impaired six nights out of seven). After a night of sleep, "it takes an hour and a half, and a cup of coffee" to be able to function (so sleep is not only impaired, it's also not restful or regenerative). This description is strongly suggestive of poor sleep hygiene and/or occult sleep apnea.
I am not attempting to make a diagnosis and do not presume to offer unsolicited medical advice, but your readers should know that what you accept as normal, simply is not. It may be common (after all, most of us spend the work week drinking large amounts of caffeine to try to compensate for only five hours sleep per night), but it is still not normal.
One thing I am curious about...yo
Erinaceus, thank you for pointing out that what is "common" certainly need not be "normal".
Why is it that every year, one of my first broken "resolutions" is the one about getting more sleep?
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